Tag Archives: Silly

The Silly brewery acquired the Enghien range of beers in 1975, when they took over the Tennstedt Decroes family brewery in the town of Enghien. The staple beer at the time was the Speciale Double Enghien, which is now more commonly known as the Double Enghien Brune. Over the years the Silly Enghien Blonde, and the Silly Enghien Noel Triple Blonde have been added to their range.

The Brasserie du Pot d’Etain as it was known was founded way back in 1880 and only just fell short of its centenary celebrations, when the Van der Haegen-Mynsbrughen family did the business deal with the local Tennstedt-Decroes family. This ensured the continuation of the Enghien beers with an already well established brewery in the locality. It seems a shame though not to dwell on some of these now defunct breweries, and so I would like to concentrate for the rest of this review on the original name of the brewery.

Pot d’Etain is actually a common title in France or Belgium and is often used in the names of breweries, hotels or bars. It actually translates into English as The Pewter Pot – a type of lidded drinking vessel often used in bygone days. Pewter is a metal alloy, mostly made of tin but mixed with other metals such as copper, bismuth, antimony and lead. Before the widespread manufacture of glass, most items of tableware throughout Europe in the 17th and 18th Centuries were made of pewter. Although not widely used anymore there is almost a deferential nostalgia for beer steins made of pewter and it is widely held by scientists that the pewter ensures the consistent temperature of the beer, protecting it from the warm hands of human beings. As a boy I remember my dad having a pewter beer pot sitting in the sideboard in the lounge gathering dust for a special occasion. I must ask him what he did with it.

I’m not sure how the Silly Enghien NoelTriple Blonde might have tasted in a Pot d’Etain, but at least in the glass I had chosen I could apply the routine inspection of the full beer before tasting, which was a medium bodied darker blonde. It had a real essence of farmyard to the aroma, and I was surprised how hoppy it was on the tongue. It certainly started out not unlike the XX Bitter (#131), or the Buffalo Belgian Bitter (#196) although at 9% ABV I expected it to retain its flavour a bit more which did fade a little as I supped. It didn’t particularly strike me as a typical Christmas beer, but I guess it was an excuse for Silly to raise the stakes on the 7.5% Silly Enghien Double Blond, which I would argue is a success. There aren’t that many strong bitter triple blondes out there worth a try, but I would recommend a solitary bottle of this for the cellar. Why not even go one better and try it in a pot d’etain?

Way back when I drank the impressive Saison Dupont (#71), I introduced what the ‘saison’ style was all about, and of course with beer it is almost impossible to truly define a style as you only need to change one or two ingredients and you can end up with a drastically different beer.

For reasons already clarified, the Saison is loosely determined as a beer that a) is brewed to last the summer months, and b) that is not too strong. With a definition like that you can begin to see the problem. The signature Silly Saison gives me a further opportunity to clarify the style via the production methodology, by which brewers attempt to produce medium strength beers which are well hopped, yet still have the famous thirst cutting acidity and quenching finish.

Some do it through using harder water, while others ensure the temperature at mashing is higher which allows more un-fermentable sugars to develop giving a harder edge to the final beer. Older techniques have relied upon the wort developing higher levels of lactic acid either before the boil or while it is cooling, and some have even exposed the wort to the air – a technique known as the Baudelot system. Other brewers have encouraged the beer to gain its acidity during maturation while in tanks made of steel. Another technique is to use dry-tasting spices or by adding dry hops to the brew – there simply is no golden rule, which makes trying new beers such fun.

The Silly Saison is one of the best known of the saison style, and the brewers at Silly have used a very different style to acquire the desired result. They take a batch of top fermented beer which has been stored for about twelve months, and blend this with a freshly brewed batch. From this they then store part of it for next year, and so the cycle continues. In the case of the Silly brewery it is all about balancing the sweet and sour enough each year to ensure the correct consistency in aroma and flavour.

I first tried the Silly Saison on a quiet night in, and the pour was uneventful leaving a thin brown ale, which was reliably more orangey when held up to the light. There was little head to talk about which meant I was able quickly to get my thirst quenched. I was under the impression that most ‘saisons’ tend to be highly carbonated, but the Silly Saison was quite flat – in fact if I had not known I might have thought this was a typical Flemish sour brown ale on first taste. The sweet hoppy flavour eventually came through as I guzzled the 25cl bottle, but I was left fairly underwhelmed in the end. This may now be a saison for the masses but I would be particularly silly to choose this over the classic Saison Dupont.

This beer has been going for quite a while, and is one of the flagship beers from the Silly brewery. It has survived a number of label changes, ending up with a rather small innocuous woodland chapel championing its marketing.

La Divine, most simply means sacred, or devoted to god, and it got me thinking about how apt the word devotion is when it comes to beer. Almost certainly the most peaceful and sacred place in my home is the cupboard which serves as my cellar, and which only in the past year has replaced my floordrobe. There aren’t many nights when I don’t stare inwards with my torch and mutter reverences at the dusty bottles. I decided to do some digging into the internets darker niches and feel I have every justification now for assigning my hoard a ‘shrine’ status, although bearing in mind that beer has been around for donkeys years, it shouldn’t really be surprising that many cultures around the world have a nominated God or deity dedicated to beer or brewing.

Dionysus is probably the most well known, the son of Zeus and Greek God of wine and beer. He was often known as the liberator due to the intoxicating power of the alcoholic drinks he would put away. In Ancient Sumeria, the Goddess of beer and brewing was Ninkasi, who was said to have provided the world with the secret to making beer. I wouldn’t argue with this one (#1), although the Egyptians might. They strongly believe that Osiris taught the world how to brew the potent beverage made with barley. The Norse people were never shy of a drink or two, and although Aegir is known primarily for being the God of the Sea, they also swear blind he is the chief God of beer also.

The Aztecs claim it was Tezcatzontecatl, the Zulus are adamant it was Mbaba Mwana Waresa, and in many African cultures, it is Yasigi who is revered. It is hard to argue with this when you consider her statue represents a large breasted female clinging to a beer ladle. The Czechs worship Radegast as the God of hospitality who created the first beer, and if you are ever in Latvia, you are lucky enough to have Raugupatis and Ragutiene – two lovers who look after the late night drinkers there.

Whatever you end up believing in, have a couple of Silly La Divines, and you probably wont care too much anymore. This is a truly delicious beer. Every now and then from the depths of nothing you find a gem that nobody else raves about but that really does it for you. The Silly La Divine makes drinking 1000 different beers all the more worthwhile. It was thick, strong and full of a sweetness that I have rarely found since Boskeun (#82). I have since bought many bottles of this, and although they have never been quite as sublime as that original taste, they have rarely let me down. Amen.

The light had begun to fade at the campsite after our late start, and it had started to get a little chilly. I dug around for my army jumper, pulled myself up to the barbecue and decided to have one last beer for the night. I closed my eyes and randomly stuck my hand into one of the boxes I had filled from our Couvin stop. Abbaye de Forest from the Brasserie Silly, and I just assumed from the uninspiring label that it was one of those tawdry beers made by a supermarket with a made-up Abbey name to sell a few extra brews. I was wrong, not that I am going to apologise to anyone.

There is actually an Abbaye de Forest, and there is actually a place called Forest. Remarkable what a little research can do. Instead of contemplating the two strange campers with the worlds smallest tent who had set up a late night butterfly watching vigil in the woods, I might have sat there pondering the decline of yet another Benedictine Abbey.

The Abbaye de Forest was founded in 1106, and it grew in splendour and importance due to its location near Brussels on the main road from Paris. Often key dignitaries in olden times heading to Brussels, would stop here for food, shelter and entertainment. The community was thus able to grow in size as craftsmen, brewers, wine growers and farmers moved to be near the opportunities provided by the Abbey. The inevitable decline came however in 1764 when a massive fire razed the place, and it wasn’t until 1964 that the local commune were able to begin the restoration of this once majestic complex. The Abbaye is available for visitors now, and is apparently well worth the effort – sadly unlike the beer.

I didn’t expect much, and to be fair the Abbaye de Forest did its best not to disappoint. It looked pale and golden once the froth had decided to calm down, a little like a Duvel (#34), although clearly that is where all comparisons ended. It was watery and non-descript, and although clearly better than most premium lagers, it certainly won’t stay long in my memory. If I was throwing a barbecue in the summer, and this was on offer in the supermarket, I might consider it for the less discerning English drinkers, however I am not, and that’s what Stella Artois (#116) is for anyway.

(Post-Script) – having visited Brussels on my stag weekend, it is clear this is a staple beer of the city; being freely available in many bars.